U.S. Census Bureau Releases Interactive Map Outlining States’ Quarterly Cannabis Tax Revenues

The U.S. Census Bureau has released an interactive map outlining the quarterly revenue states have garnered from cannabis excise taxes and what percent of their revenues the taxes represent. The agency’s data covers the second half of 2021, all of 2022, and the first half of this year. 

The data set for Q2 2023 is incomplete with several states where adult-use businesses are operational not included, such as Washington State, New Jersey, and Maryland. Other states, including Virginia and Minnesota have legalized cannabis for adult-use but sales have yet to commence. The data also includes states that impose excise taxes on medical cannabis sales.  

The available data shows that Q2 2023 cannabis tax revenues in five states represented more than 1% of the states’ total tax revenues, including Alaska (1.32%), Colorado (1.21%), Illinois (2.04%), Michigan (2.16%), and Oregon (3.19%). Among those states, only Alaska and Michigan had increases in cannabis tax revenues from the previous quarter, with 18.35% and 8.53% respectively. Colorado saw a 0.33% decrease, Illinois a 3.72% decrease, and Oregon a 7.95% decrease.  

Cannabis tax revenues for two states, Arizona (0.73%) and Missouri (0.92%), represented between 0.5% and 1% of revenue and both saw increases from Q1 figures at 9.73% and 89.4%, respectively.  

The cannabis tax revenues from the remaining states included in the dataset comprised less than 0.5% of the state’s revenues in Q2; those states include California (0.26%), Connecticut (0.05%), Maine (0.11%), Massachusetts (0.42%), Mississippi (0.02%), Montana (0.25%), Nevada (0.17%), New Mexico (0.06%), New York (0.37%), Oklahoma (0.09%), Pennsylvania (0.20%), Rhode Island (0.13%), Vermont (0.04%), and Washington, D.C. (0.01%).